Lean higher education

Lean Higher Education (LHE) refers to the adaptation of lean thinking to higher education, typically with the goal of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of operations. Lean, originally developed at the Toyota Motor Corporation, is a management philosophy that emphasizes "respect for people" and "continuous improvement" as core tenets. Lean encourages employees at all organizational levels to re-imagine services from a customer's point of view, removing process steps that do not add value and emphasizing steps that add the most value. While the concept of "customers" and "products" is controversial in higher education settings, there are certainly diverse stakeholders who are interested in the success of colleges and universities, the most common of which are students, faculty, administrators, potential employers and various levels of government.

Lean in higher education has been applied both to administrative and academic services. Balzer (2010) described such initiatives within university settings, including the critical factors for success and ways to measure progress. He noted that LHE can be effective to respond to higher education's heightened expectations, reducing expenses in an era of rising costs, meeting demands of public accountability, and leveraging institutional resources to fulfill the educational, scholarship, and outreach missions of higher education. A comprehensive literature review examining Lean's impact on higher education has been published. The authors reported that Lean has a significant and measurable impact when used to improve academic and administrative operations. Such improvements are effective at the department/unit level or throughout and entire institution. However, the authors noted that implementing Lean is a serious undertaking that is most impactful if it involves long-term, strategic planning.

Though the application of Lean management in higher education is more prevalent in administrative processes (e.g., admissions, registration, HR, and procurement) it also has been applied to academic processes (e.g., course design and teaching, improving degree programs, student feedback, and handling of assignments) in an increasing number of cases.

Pioneering academic institutions who have implemented Lean include: Cardiff University (Wales), Edinburgh Napier University (Scotland), Michigan Technological University (USA), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (USA), University of Aberdeen (Scotland), University of Central Oklahoma (USA), University of St. Andrews (Scotland), Winona State University (USA) and others. A group of universities in the U.K. have formed LeanHEHub [7]. In Scotland, the Scottish Higher Education Improvement Network (SHEIN) is a collaborative network of HE professionals working within the area of continuous improvement. SHEIN exists to encourage the sharing of resources and best practice, online and face-to-face.

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